Coolant [Spaceships]

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It seems to me that if you have a reactionless drive, then it violates conservation of momentum, by definition.

That generally gets plowed under by the way typical reactionless drives violate conservation of energy. A drive that used fuel the way a 100% efficient total conversion drive did wouldn't but the typical drives far exceed those numbers.

For example and using Spaceships numbers a ship with such a drive that was 50% fuel tank would run dry in a little over 38 weeks (though it is nearing c). Compare that to Anthony's numbers of the 250 MW reactor running all year on 2 kg.

A ship that used no reaction mass but didn't violate conservation of energy might be not really much more interesting to adventure writers than a hard scicne one that did use reaction mass.